uTest takes testing mobile

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Weekends used to be for golf, but uTest’s crowdsourced testing community can now stay on top of their projects while they’re on the course. uTest last week introduced applications for the iPad and iPhone, and with these apps, testers can report bugs and update the status of their work from their phones. Managers can also use the app to check their projects.

Matt Johnston, vice president of marketing and community at uTest, said that testing is no longer a weeknight activity for the company servers. “We got a lot of feedback from customers and our community that things are moving ever more quickly. Testing isn’t being done 10–5 Monday through Friday. One of the things they like about us is that they can set it up Friday night and come back Monday morning to a list of bugs,” he said.

Therefore, said Johnston, worried managers like to be able to peek in on testing progress over the weekend, and without having to log into the company systems.

“You can get notified that a customer has a question about a bug,” he said. “You can do testing on an application and report those test cases. If you’re a tester, you can keep tabs on every part of your testing project. You can see the test cycle is going as planned, and that the 20 testers who have participated submitted these bugs.”

Additionally, said Johnston, many developers are now using the on-demand uTest testing community to check out mobile applications. Being able to do those tests in the real world, then log into the site and add bugs via the iPhone uTest application, makes the job easier for testers, said Johnston.

“We’ve had requests like, ‘I need to test this when it’s roaming,’ or ‘I need two people, one person driving and one to test transitioning from cell tower to cell tower,’” he said. “People have come with mapping applications and said, ‘I want people to actually go to the mall, turn left, go to the library and see how this mapping application is working outside the lab in the wild.’ We’re seeing more and more of that because location-based applications are taking off, and it’s insufficient to test that in a lab setting.”

The uTest application is available in the iPhone App Store. Interestingly enough, Johnston said that the application was accepted into the App Store by Apple within one day, a fact that he attributes to the extensive testing the app was put through.

uTest also closed a US$13 million round of funding in September 2010 to build out it services.